Some days you just can't be bothered. Six months in, six comments received in that time - my thirst for fact is running low. I even had a poser to solve, regarding the seeds in bell peppers, and whether they're poisonous or not. The answer, in short, is probably not, but I couldn't find a proper answer - although there were people who claim to have grown chillies for 20 years, and who thought that the seeds were the spicy bit (it seems more likely that it's the shiny bit on the inside of the skin). Sometimes I wonder how I keep this thing going with only forum douchebags to turn to for confirmation. In the end, I resorted to talking to an actual human being, who informed me of this:
Kangaroos are able to pause their pregnancies.
A nifty fact and no mistake, even if only for the punalicious title it affords me. After the kangaroos mate and conceive, the embryo is held in stasis until the previous joey has emerged from the pouch. Have they ever heard of just waiting? Lay off the red wine, you crazy roos. It's probably a lot more complicated than this, but frankly, a full analysis of the machinations of a sticky marsupial orifice isn't on the cards when I've got a dinner to keep down.
Incidentally, there's a legend that claims that the first Westerners to reach Australia asked their Aboriginal guides what those big, hopping animals were called, and that they were told "ganguruu" - which means 'I don't know' - and that's how kangaroos got their names. This is bollocks.
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